


Roses For The Abyss

by IDreamtOfManderleyAgain



Category: Hellraiser (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical subject matter, F/M, Frank Cotton Is His Own Warning Tag, Implied Past Abuse, Manipulation, Men Being Creeps, Mental Health Issues, Pinsty-By-Way-Of-Elliot Spencer, Terrible Mental Healthcare, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 08:31:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IDreamtOfManderleyAgain/pseuds/IDreamtOfManderleyAgain
Summary: The mind is a labyrinth, its wounds an oubliette. A ghost haunts a haunted girl.  An ominous pillar whispers darkness into vulnerable minds. An unholy god seethes, and writhes...and waits.In an alternate timeline where The Channard Institute was never torn down and Kirsty Cotton never left it, Three young women must work together to prevent an ancient evil from inflicting it's unyielding violence onto the fragile mortal world.





	1. Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will have warnings for specific content in specific chapters, in the event that I think a scene might hit someone's real-world trauma triggers. This fic has horror elements and obviously you can expect the same subject matter from the films to be present here, but my intention is to be tasteful and mindful.
> 
> This fic will have annotations at the ends of chapters. Anything marked with a star (*) etc. Will have a corresponding note. I'm doing this because I might reference films in the franchise after movie 3, and I don't expect every reader to be familiar with the whole franchise necessarily. Movies 1-2 are required viewing, while movies 3 and 6 are recommended but they are less necessary (it will be a bit more fun if you do, I think). I may also reference more obscure material, like old script elements that were scrapped from final films, or reference myths, etc.

 

_“Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,_

_Lethe the River of Oblivion roules_

_Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,_

_Forthwith his former state and being forgets,_

_Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.”_

\- Paradise Lost

 

**Chapter One:**

**Oblivion**

 

“Let’s go over this again, Kirsty.”

 

Dr. Peter Daniels tapped a ballpoint pen against the plastic armrest of his office chair, dark brows drawn together and lips pursed. Kirsty stared him down.

 

“Which part?”

 

Daniels sighed and shifted, then glanced at his expensively gleaming watch.

 

“I want to know more about the part where you left the house. You say you don’t know what caused the fire.”

 

Kirsty gave him a bitter smirk. “That sounds about right. I think you’ve got everything you need.”

 

Daniels dropped the pen to his desk, frustration finally winning over professionalism. She could hear the scratch as he ran hands over his graying, closely-trimmed beard - a fresh new look that had him staring and preening in his office mirror every time he walked past it. His hands were dry and cracked against his face, and the nails on his thick, stubby fingers looked chewed to the quick. It disgusted her.

 

“Kirsty, I’m only trying to help you get past these delusio-”

 

“I’ve had four _fucking_ years to recognise just how full of shit that is.”

 

She continued to fume as he steepled his fingers together and leaned his forehead against his hands, bumping the bridge of his glasses a touch.

 

“....It’s important that we move past the delusions, Kirsty. I’m sorry you’ve struggled with them for so long, but I can only help you once you make the first move.”

 

She hated this. She hated the false empathy, the empty, scripted statements of support. She could rip her hair out, she despised it so much. This man didn’t give a shit about her and he never would.

 

“You wanna know what I’ve struggled with, _Daniels?_ I’ve struggled with this fucking prison you keep me in -”

 

“You’re here for your own good, Kirsty. You know that, we’ve discussed this.”

 

“Do you think I’m a goddamn an _idiot?”_ Kirsty shot up from her chair and started to pace. “You and the cops can’t figure out how to fucking pin those murders on me, so you keep me here -!”

 

Orderlies rushed into the room, ready to subdue her if need be, but Daniels made a quick gesture to keep them at bay. They filtered back out the door quickly.

 

“That paranoia is keeping you from opening yourself up to me, Kirsty. You’re afraid. When are you going to trust me? I only want to help you break free, but I can’t do that if you keep creating more reasons to vilify me.” He put on a sympathetic face for her, his brows drawing together in a masculine pout that would have been handsome without the unsettling _falseness_ that shadowed beneath it. She imagine he conned plenty of women in his day.

 

She scoffed at him and leaned forward, her face full of sneering defiance and flashing teeth. “...Fuck you, Daniels. You’re a fucking liar and you’re not worth _shit_ at your job. I wouldn’t trust you in a thousand years. You think I can’t see right through you? After years of listening to your bullshit, you think I can’t see _exactly_ who you are?”

 

Daniels was quiet for a moment, and she watched as his pout faded slowly from his face and his eyes grew sharp.

 

“Don’t you think I should ask you the same question? You really think I can’t see _you_ , Kirsty? You think I don’t know who _you_ are? I still haven’t asked about your mother.”

 

She staggered back from him, shocked that his facade had actually dropped. “...What did you just fucking say to me?”

 

He smiled at her. “I still haven’t asked you about your mother’s death, Kirsty. We both know that’s where all this _really_ started, don’t we?”

 

She gaped at him, stricken.

 

“You _bastard!_ ” She shrieked, and two male orderlies rushed in again and seized her. Kirsty knocked a chair over as she squirmed against their bruising grips on her body, felt a cold terror shoot like a bullet through her chest. They rarely did this to her, she must have really freaked them out this time. Kirsty let her body go slack because she knew better. It was pointless to pick this fight. The man on her left pulled out a syringe and shot her up with sedatives, then the two of them started dragging her from the room as she sobbed more obscenities at Daniels. She could see him watching her, his eyes inscrutable, that cynical smile still on his face.

 

“Don’t you fret, Kirsty.”

 

\----

 

Hours later Kirsty turned to her side under her meager covers, bunching her old, flattened pillow into a more comfortable shape. The sound of rain pattered against the facility roof, soothing her down from the rage and shame and old hurts. It was in moments like these, curled up under too-thin blankets in the dark, that this rat cage actually felt like the place of healing it was supposed to be. _Ironically it only feels that way when I’m not being interrogated by doctors._ Kirsty snorted wryly to herself.

 

It wasn’t like she didn’t know she was sick. Of _course_ she was sick. Who wouldn’t be traumatised in her position? Who wouldn’t be unstable? Kirsty knew she needed healing.

 

Healing was hard to come by when the person in charge of your care was focused on lining their pockets and convinced you were a murderer, though.

 

When this first started, when she was a little younger, she was still naive enough to believe that this situation really was for her own benefit. Despite her anger at their dismissals, deep down she really believed that the cops were on her side, there to do their jobs and protect the innocent, even if they believed her story was the delusion of a traumatized girl. She believed that the doctors genuinely thought she was in need of their help (which she certainly felt she was, precisely because her experiences were _real_ ), that they could all be convinced of the truth if she just fought hard enough.

 

What it all came down to was that Kirsty had believed in the genuine kindness and humanity of others.

 

When Channard came to her so long ago with papers to sign, telling her that it was for her own good that she keep herself checked into the facility until the cops could get to the bottom of things, she went ahead and did it. She followed the guidance of these people like a lost puppy, eager for someone else to take the reins for a while. Someone to give her much needed help and healing. Anything, just so she could finally just rest and recuperate from the horrors she had faced alone. She wanted to be rescued, and she believed that these people - the cops, the doctors, all of them - were professionally trained rescuers. She believed they were what they were _supposed_ to be, what they told her they were. So like a fool, she put herself into their hands.

 

That was before she had discovered Dr. Channard’s obsession with the occult, and situations had escalated beyond her control. With Channard missing, presumed dead, and the Institute in the hands of Daniels and his ilk, she was left imprisoned within the confines of Channard’s remaining empire.

 

Now it seemed like she had no power at all, no way to call it all off and take it back, nothing to bargain with, no way to escape the clutches of dispassionate people convinced she was a dangerous criminal who needed to be dealt with accordingly.

 

Was she really that stupid, that she didn’t immediately recognise the folly of just signing one’s soul away like that?

 

A crash of thunder startled Kirsty from her ruminations. The inky night outside her window was shot through with the sparkling orange hues of street lights, the warm colors refracting through tiny water droplets speckled on the pane. She loved the rain; loved storms in fact. There was something soothing about being tucked away, warm and dry and safe while the chaos clamored around her. Sometimes, when the rain came, she could summon that bit of peace buried within herself to daydream and imagine she was somewhere else, someone other than the Kirsty living this particular half-life.

 

With storms came trouble in the institute, however. They were clearly low on funding, and the facility was old. Something, somewhere always seemed to be on the fritz, especially when the weather got bad enough. Particularly when it came to the electricity. Somebody always seemed to have to fix a blown fuse connecting to her room, or a bulb would blow. They must have changed the lightbulbs in this room thousands of times in the four years she occupied it. The little old TV she had the privilege of keeping (a bribe to encourage ‘good behavior’) liked to cut to static an awful lot, too. It was nicer just to watch outside the windows, anyway. The TV always had bad reception and only ran a few blurry channels, most of them featuring things like infomercials and old reruns of _I Love Lucy_ and _Gilligan’s Island._ By this point, Kirsty had seen every discarded, unwanted VHS tape that circulated in this shithole.

 

Life within the Institute felt like an existence stuck outside of time, a place where the memory of having a real, normal life was lost to a bottomless purgatory of waiting. It was as if her entire life had stopped, stagnated, and Kirsty felt trapped in a loop of the days right after her father’s house went up in flames. When she watched from the windowsill above her bed, she could remind herself that time really was passing, and there was a living, thriving world out there that she might reach one day, if only she could just figure out the right steps to take.

 

The first year she was intent on escape for both herself and Tiffany. It was a hard-won battle on Kirsty’s part, but eventually it was decided by the Powers That Be that Tiffany could be released to a local adoption agency. Kirsty had put up such a constant fuss on her behalf that they couldn’t justify keeping Tiffany after she began speaking once more (and Kirsty had made sure Tiffany wouldn’t repeat her mistakes and start spouting fantastical nonsense about demons…). As far as Kirsty knew, Tiffany had been adopted two years ago.

 

Of course it hadn’t been so easy for Kirsty, who had been committed by Channard not long after admittance and was a suspect in multiple homicide. She had been given no access to legal avenues for legitimate escape, and ultimately she recognised that it was fruitless to attempt a jailbreak when the local authorities would be ready to follow after her. Without outside help, there was no way she could skip town easily enough to evade them. Kirsty had never been a defeatist, but at this point she recognised what battles she could fight. What kind of life was living on the run, anyway?

 

Kirsty knew something was wrong. She knew that at the very least she should have been afforded some kind of legal advocacy, but this place was full of clever, shady people, with ties to the authorities and god knows who else. They kept her as ignorant and powerless as the frightened, barely-twenty year old girl who knew hardly anything about the world that she came here as, and without family to fight on her behalf, she had run out of luck. Four years in and Kirsty was still swimming blind, still gasping to keep her head above the water

 

So she focused her efforts on smaller acts of subterfuge. Sneaking around _in_ the facility, rather that outside of it.  She knew this floor like the back of her hand. She knew each patient, each doctor’s office, each janitor’s closet, each dingy restroom and every loose vent screen in the place. She knew where the elevator to the maintenance level was, too. Not that she’d ever made it down there.

 

Deciding that she had wallowed enough, Kirsty checked the clock on the wall; it was late, and tonight was a Thursday. Usually Thursdays were when the orderly charged with the nighttime monitoring shift down her hall was Chuck. Chuck was a bit of an irreverent slacker who was more interested in watching whatever new horror VHS he’d bought himself on his little TV than keeping a good eye on patients. Lights would be low around the facility and staff activity was minimal. Most of the orderlies would have their guard down. She wandered over to the left wall. Low and close to the corner, hidden behind her television stand, there was a loosened brick. Sliding the brick out of its place, Kirsty dug around for a bent out of shape bobby pin. Sweeping her hand further, she grabbed a thin string with an old dingy quarter tied to the other side.

 

Moving back to the door, she took a good look out the small square window set into it. Satisfied, she inserted the pin into the emergency hole on the doorknob and pressed, unlocking the inner mechanism. Kirsty tentatively pushed forward and peeked for safety once more, this time through the opening to see the desk stationed down the left hall about twelve yards from her door. Chuck was there exactly as expected, his eyes and ears riveted to faintly screaming women while mindlessly stuffing his face with potato chips.

 

 _He’s got the right idea_ , Kirsty thought. She ever so lightly stepped out of her doorway and tip-toed her way down the right hall.

 

Most of the patients were housed down the west wing, but the corridors of the east wing was where they kept the _difficult_ individuals, nice and cozy behind locked doors. Like herself. Nobody liked to talk about the maintenance levels. Kirsty herself had heard the rumors from the mouths of timid patients, warning her not to act out too much lest she be punished with a little room change. The staff had yet to take her down there though, despite her tendency for trouble. Which suggested to her that the maintenance levels were kept very secret, and that they didn’t actually _punish_ anyone that way - at least not anyone coherent enough to tattle.

 

Room 302 housed Mrs. Merriweather, a nasty old bird who raged and squawked obscenities at any employee who dared approach her. She wasn’t dangerous, but they liked to keep her down here regardless because she was for the most part universally hated by the staff for her outbursts.

 

Kirsty fished her hairpin around in the keyhole, unlocked the door, and popped her head in. Merriweather was sitting on her bed, looking miserable as usual and watching her little TV, but the creaking door pulled her attention to Kirsty. Merriweather’s eyes lit up in a secret joy, and she waddled her little old hunched body over to meet her.

 

Kirsty smiled back. “What would you like this time, Jessica?”

 

“Oh I’d love some more of those chocolate chip cookies, dear!” she whispered excitedly.

 

“You got it!” Kirsty whispered back, saluting Merriweather and stepping back out.

 

Continuing her trek down the hall, she took a left and punched in a security code at a glass doorway, walked through another hall, and into the employee rec room. Against the back wall stood a series of vending machines, one for soda and two for snacks. Kirsty took her coin from her pocket and began to work, dropping it into machines and pulling back the string repeatedly until the fruit of her efforts were cradled like precious valuables in her arms: a cold soda, two bags of sour cream n’ onion potato chips, and Mrs. Merriweather’s cookies.

 

Kirsty made her way back down the hallways, stopping to drop the cookies off to Merriweather who giggled conspiratorially and patted her hand, and returned to her room with good-ol’ Chuck none-the-wiser. She stashed away her tools behind the brick and switched her TV on, catching the tail end of some _Lucy_ episode. She got herself comfortable back on her springy bed, pulled open a fresh bag of chips, and twisted the cap off her soda, which hissed and fizzed invitingly. She sighed in contentment, savoring the simple, hedonistic pleasure of tiny bubbles sharply popping against her tongue.

 

She loved Thursdays.

 

She generally wasn’t afforded this kind of stuff, and sneaking out for them was always a risk. But it was worth it just to have the little things, sometimes. Helping Merriweather remember that she was allowed to just be a sweet little old lady sometimes was nice, too.

 

Kirsty let the low rumble of rain and thunder soothe her as she nibbled delicately at her chips, letting herself get lost in thought. Then everything plunged into darkness.

 

She sighed in exasperation. The storm had finally cut out the power.

 

There was a faint scream coming from far down the west wing hallway; somebody didn’t take to the dark too well. Kirsty screwed her soda bottle closed and balled up an empty chip bag, then walked to her bathroom by the dim light of the distant street lamps shining through her window. In the cupboard under her sink she kept a little shoebox stuffed up behind the pipes. She used it  to hide leftover trash from her little junk food excursions, and she emptied it out periodically on her trips sometimes.

 

Returning to her bed, she laid herself back against her pillows and toyed with her half-empty bottle, staring out her window.

 

That was when the television clicked back on.

 

Kirsty shot upright, spine ramrod straight and eyes riveted to the screen. In the pitch black, with the entire facility’s power completely dead, her television was on and playing nothing but loud, static snow.

 

Her breath caught, her heart pounding. She couldn’t move her body, couldn’t blink.

 

For what felt like forever, she kept full, agonizing attention on her television screen, just waiting for something, _anything_ to happen. What was this? How was it happening? What did it mean?

 

The television gave her no answers, only endless, monotonous white noise. The longer she listened the louder that static sounded, and the heavier the atmosphere of her room seemed to grow, until suddenly she was realizing that the static would break into lower hums. Was she imagining that? Was she imagining all of this?

 

No! _There_ , she heard it again. It was like the static wasn’t just static, but a voice. Was the channel reception clearing?

 

_“Y...ha…he...m...”_

 

She sucked in another breath, trembling. Yes. A man’s voice…

 

_“K...st...”_

 

She started to her feet, backing away from the television.

 

_“K...ty.”_

 

Oh god, she _knew_ that voice! She…

 

**_“Kirsty.”_ **

 

Kirsty brought her hands up to her ears. _Stop._

 

She grit her teeth, panting with terror. “Stop. Stop it right fucking now, do you hear me?! Stop stop stop _STOP!”_

 

And everything stopped.

 

The television shut off abruptly. The facility lights powered back on. As if she had said the magic word, the heavy atmosphere lightened back to normal, like nothing had happened at all. Like she had imagined it.

 

Like a delusion.

 

Kirsty staggered backwards, until her shoulder blades were flush to the icy-cold wall furthest from the television, then slid her trembling body to the floor and held her knees to her chest.

  
  



	2. Dreamers

  


_“We've got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.”_

_― Daphne du Maurier_

 

**Chapter Two:**

**Dreamers**

 

Joey Summerskill pulled and patted at the hem of her pencil skirt, smoothing it down in preparation for Doc’s camera. She felt absurd and overdressed standing around in the cold, empty hospital room in a prim power suit, her blonde hair wrapped up in an elegant bun.

 

“Joey you’ve been fidgeting for half an hour. Do you wanna roll the camera or not?”

 

Sighing, she turned to look at him. “I don’t see what the point is, Doc, there’s nothing worth shooting.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Is it really any surprise? How did the boys down at Assignment know it?”

 

Doc grimaced, his eyes sympathetic. “Come on Joey, you know that’s not fair. How could they have known it’d be a quiet night at a hospital? D’you really think they paid off every accident victim in the city?”

 

A nurse walked in with a metal trolley, and Joey stepped out of her way.

 

“I know, I know. It’s just….so convenient, isn’t it? First gig I get that isn’t kindergarteners or diet gurus, and it gets taken away from me.”

 

Doc’s cell began to ring, and he gave her an apologetic look as he answered. “Speak.”

 

 _“Doc, 24th and Cedar, fast. Hostage situation.”_ Joey recognised Martha’s voice on the other end of the line.

 

Joey’s eyes lit up, locking with his, and Doc seized the moment. “Look, Joey’s here. Can we go together down there?”

 

_“No need, Martin’s already there. Sorry, Doc. You should hurry, you’ve got an ambulance to beat!”_

 

Joey looked away in disappointment, her eyes turning to the nurse that was silently laying out shiny, freshly sterile surgical tools in preparation for future patients. Doc’s sympathetic sigh dragged her eyes back to his. She smiled sadly. “Better hurry Doc. A _real_ story with a _real_ reporter is waiting.”

 

Doc furrowed his brow in frustration. “Joey, look. Can I take you home? I can drive by your place.”

 

Joey shrugged the bitterness off her shoulders, knowing it wasn’t fair to Doc to keep wallowing. “You’ll miss the money shots. Don’t worry about me, I’ll catch a bus. Go on, it’s alright.” The nurse nodded awkwardly at her, signaling so she could scooch herself and the cart between them and out the door.

 

Doc quickly packed up his camera. “Ok, but be careful. It’s dangerous out there, Joey.” He pulled the strap of his camera bag over his shoulder and placed a hand against her arm. “And lighten up, ok kid? The story of your life could be right around the corner!”

 

She shook her head in agreement and smiled up at him. Satisfied, he backed out of the hospital room doorway with a quick nod goodbye.

 

Alone now, she let her shoulders fall again. “That _is_ the story of my life.”

 

Joey picked up her purse from it’s lone uninviting chair and pushed back a blonde lock that had fallen out of her bun. Maybe this time she was just going to have to completely improvise. Ignore the standard assignment, and invent her own based upon the concept itself. Maybe instead of being told to walk into a damn hospital and hope for the best (or _worst,_ as the case may be), it would just be more prudent to do her own investigative work on the local hospitals themselves. Exiting through the ER door with a bit more confidence, she stepped into the hallway.

 

 _Strange._ No more than two hours before, she’d walked down this hallway. When she got here it had been well lit, and there were a few nurses buzzing around like busy bees. Now, the lights seemed so _dim._ The long expanse that had once been fairly comfortable seemed tense and alarming, devoid of life and warmth. Joey could hear her heels crack against the linoleum as she slowly tread her way through the empty corridor, the too-loud sound suffusing her with an irrational anxiety at the idea of being heard.

 

As she drew closer to the next exit, she could see red and blue lights flash through the rectangular windows in the doorway. Before she could properly respond, a medical team slammed the door wide open, shouting and pulling a gurney. Strapped to it was a groaning young man, and he was absolutely covered in blood and lacerations, as if small sharp objects had dragged through his skin and torn into it like fabric. Over the shouts of the paramedics, she could hear the frantic voice of a young woman yelling back at anyone who would hear. “Look I was just with him, it wasn’t my fault!” Her denial was ignored; the team had more important things to worry about.

 

“It’s got nothing to do with me!” Again she was met with no response, the team too focused on the emergency at hand to tend to the hysterical girl. They made their way through the emergency room doors, and a female doctor stopped to keep the trembling young woman from entering. “What are you gonna do? Look don’t hurt him alright?!”

 

Joey got her bearings again, standing up straight and quickly walking through the trail of blood on the floor to catch up with her. “Excuse me…” The doctor, frustrated at the bystanders, gave the dark-haired girl a clipped response. “If you ladies could please stay away from the ER? There’s an emergency here and I need everybody who’s not on staff out of the area immediately.” The crying young woman moaned dejectedly and staggered away, defeated and lost. Joey followed her.

 

“Hey, hey wait, look, I’m a reporter. Please stop! Could you tell me what happened?”

 

The girl turned around in a flash, visibly upset, and Joey felt her heart twinge in her chest. As bedraggled as the girl looked with her mussed hair and dripping mascara, she was lovely; doe-eyed and pouty-lipped. Not much younger than Joey herself. “Look, lady, I already said I don’t know what happened. I was just _there,_ alright?” It was obvious, how the girl was putting up a wall of apathy. It was unconvincing through the tears and hiccuping breaths.

 

Joey’s hands raised, unbidden, and she felt herself grasp the girl’s arms, seemingly possessed to offer some form of support. “I...I just want to know what you saw. Where is ‘there?’”

 

The girl gave another hiccup. “The Boiler Room. It’s a club. Can I like, go now?” She shrugged Joey’s hands away.

 

Joey nodded. “Yeah. Yes, I’m sorry.” She felt like shit. She was seizing an opportunity for her career, and accosting a terrified woman with questions in the process. At the expense of an ER patient, no less.

 

The girl backed away through the doors, but Joey followed quickly after. “Hey...hey wait!”

 

The girl slowed, her strength weakening. She turned to look back at Joey once more, and Joey felt something pang in her chest at the fragile, tired look on the girl’s face.

 

“I don’t know how I can help you. I barely knew the guy. Listen, I’m tired, okay? I just wanna go...lie down somewhere.” The girl looked so timid and forlorn that Joey was loathe to leave her.

 

Joey sucked in a breath. “I’m...not asking for more information. Not right now anyway. I just wanted to know if you needed anything. Do you need a ride home?”  
  
The girl’s face twisted at that, her brow furrowing as she looked away, and Joey didn’t understand why.

 

“I can...I can catch a cab or something. I’ll be fine.” She nodded at Joey as if to emphasize, and gave an awkward nonchalant gesture with her hands, swinging them outward and dropping them carelessly against her sides.

 

“Well….what’s your name? I’m Joey Summerskill.”

Joey put her hand out for the other girl to shake. The girl wiped off her hand on her black mini-skirt and then returned the gesture.

 

“Terri Valentine.”

 

Joey tried to delicately smile at Terri in the hopes she could set the other girl at ease. Then Joey reached into her purse to grab a business card.

 

“Well Terri, why don’t you take my card? If you remember anything important, or need any help or anything, you can give me a call, okay?”

 

She watched as Terri hesitantly took the card and then shoved it into a pocket.

 

“Thanks, I guess. I’m...I’m just gonna head on out now.”

 

Joey nodded. “Alright. But don’t forget. It’s really okay to come to me for help if you need it, I promise.”

 

Terri looked like she wanted to believe her, but didn’t.

 

“Sure thing.”

 

\---

 

Joey dropped her purse on the side table, sighing as she stepped her aching feet out of her heels. She wandered into her little kitchen, flicking the lights on as she moved. She opened her fridge and pulled out a defrosted steak, some fresh broccoli and a bottle of red wine she’d left chilling since that morning. After popping the cork and grabbing a glass she dragged out some pots and pans from the cupboard. She set about making dinner for one, lost in thought as she cleaned and chopped broccoli florets.

Seeing that man dragged in, covered in bloodied lacerations was something else. She still felt a little shaken. What in hell could do that to a person?

 

 _That girl._ She’d said that everything had happened at some club. The Boiler Room. Joey had to wonder what the hell kind of club could leave you in such an unlikely predicament. Shaking her head to herself, she took a sip of her wine and then slid the broccoli off her cutting board into a pot of simmering water to blanche.

 

\---

 

Joey briskly walked up to the hospital information desk with more confidence than she felt.

 

“Excuse me Ma’am, I’m wondering if you could help me?”

 

The aging, dark-skinned woman behind the desk pushed her pink-rimmed glasses up her nose, the string of shiny beads attached to them clacking lightly at the movement. The ID card on her lapel read the name ‘Angela.’ “Of course honey, what can I do? Who are you looking for?”

 

Joey fidgeted. “Well, ah, I don’t know exactly. I’m a reporter. Last night I was here to do a segment on accidents in the city, and a young man was wheeled in. He was in bad shape. The incident was….strange and I’m hoping I could talk to the patient. I don’t know what his name is, or where he’s staying. If it helps, he was...cut up pretty badly.”

 

Angela’s eyes went wide. “Well, I don’t think I can do that for you, miss. For one thing, I can’t just let anyone up to our patients, you see. For another…” The woman lowered her voice to a whisper at this. “I know which boy you’re talking about. We all do, it’s been the talk of the whole building all day. And you wanna know why? Because that boy is _gone_.”

 

Joey leaned closer, whispering as well. “What do you mean gone? Did he die?”

 

Angela frowned, taking a moment to recount the stories she heard. “I don’t really know. The nurses that were on his case...they say he just vanished. One minute, he was screaming bloody murder and the next, there was silence, and no patient. No body, no blood, he’s just gone. He just disappears right out of thin air! And nobody remembers seeing it happen. Mitch was getting more gauze, Jessie was prepping a syringe. They all must have been looking away at the same time, just at the right moment, and then poof! Gone.”

 

Joey felt her spine crawl at the story. Whatever she expected to hear this morning, the suggestion of something supernatural was far from it. She considered what Angela said in chilled silence, and then nodded. She dug through her purse for some business cards, and handed a small bunch to Angela. “Thanks. Listen, if anybody who saw all this has anything to add, could you do me a favor and give them my card?”

 

Angela stuffed the cards into a little plastic organizer full of pens and sticky-note pads. “Alright, you take care now. But this? It’s not normal and I wouldn’t have anything to do with it if I were you.”

 

\---

 

Joey parallel parked on the street outside The Boiler Room. It was midday, so the area was mostly deserted and parking was abundant.

 

She locked her car and wandered over to the entrance. The name certainly made sense now that she could see the building, which seemed to be an old decrepit factory of some sort converted into a brand new nightclub, giving the aesthetics an industrial theme. There was an ugly iron arch, the metal twisted above her into the club’s name. To the sides of the text there were open pipes pointed upwards, but whatever their purpose they seemed to be off at the moment. Passing under it, she knocked on the thick metal doors. Joey waited near to a minute before it gave a loud offending creak and swung open, a thick, meaty hand holding it to the side. Behind it stood a tall man with gelled and spiked bleach-blonde hair in a loose black leather jacket. A bouncer, perhaps?

 

“Whaddya want, sweetheart? Place is closed.”

 

“I…” Hesitant, she looked for words to give him. She collected herself and cleared her throat. “My name is Joey Summerskill. Yesterday there was a horrible accident. A young man was taken in to the hospital, he was cut up pretty badly. I was given a tip that he was last seen in The Boiler Room.” The idea of mentioning the weeping girl she met made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want to endanger her accidentally.

 

He raised his brows at her. “And?”

 

“A...And I was wondering if anyone at this establishment had any knowledge that could aid in the investigation.”

 

He snickered. “You a cop, Blondie?”

 

She steeled her gaze. “No, I’m a reporter.”

 

“Well nobody ‘round here has been talking about anything like that. It’s all business as usual. Haven’t heard nothing about it, and I’d know if somebody got dragged outta here all bloodied up.”

 

“Are you the manager?”

 

He sniffed. “Nope. That’d be J.P. He’s out.”

 

“Well, when can I get in contact with him?”

 

“He’s usually around here during open hours, you could probably find him then.” There was an echo of noise far behind him, the voices of men laughing.

 

“Say...tonight?” Joey took a peak behind the bouncer to spot a table in the dim, smoky interior, where a group of men drank and played poker at a table in the back of the room. A man with black, gel-slick hair and a smarmy smirk flicked a playing card at one of his buddies, puffing a cigarette that waggled around on the left side of his mouth.

 

“Club will be closed for the rest of the week, actually. Place is old and we’re doing some last-minute repairs. Won’t be open again until Saturday night.”

 

Joey looked back again at the Bouncer, nodding. “Alright then. Thanks.”

 

“No problem.” He nodded back and then turned to shut the door.

 

\---

 

Joey swirled a greasy fry into the pool of ketchup on her plate. She watched half a tomato slice slip and fall from the back of Doc’s burger as he took a bite.

 

“So what do you think, Doc? What are my leads?”

 

Doc wiped at his mustache with a brown paper napkin. “I think it’s some nasty shit, Joey. If you plan on looking into this more I want you to be careful. Whoever’s responsible is probably still out there. Somebody had to take the guy from the hospital somehow, I don’t care if they’re Houdini. If they catch wind that some reporter is digging around, you could get yourself into a lot of trouble. I don’t want to see you get hurt, Joey.”

 

Joey smiled at Doc’s paternal concern. “I know, Doc. But this could be my big break!”

 

Doc sighed and smiled at her. “Alright, alright. But I want updates every step of the way. I don’t want radio silence for a week where I’m left wondering if the next time I’m called in to work, I’ll find you dead in a ditch and the latest segment on the station. Is that how you want to get yourself on prime time?”

 

Joey laughed and threw a napkin at him, which he batted away. “Of course not! Now are you gonna tell me what you think my leads are, or not? Where do I go from here?”

 

He leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’d check out the local records, see if there’s anything about accidents or murders like this. Maybe this has happened before.”

 

Joey snapped her fingers, thankful he pointed out the obvious. “Of course! Thanks Doc.” She took a swig of her iced tea and wrote herself a reminder on her notepad, brainstorming ideas of what to research. He gave her a concerned half-smile in return and popped a fry from her plate into his mouth.

 

\---

 

Joey scrolled through the slide on the microfiche, blinking her blurring eyes and powering through the monotony of her grueling research. Checking her watch, she realized that she’d been here for about three hours now, and she was certain that she had many more hours to go. She sighed and got up from her table to stretch.

 

Heading up the stairs onto the main floor, she wandered over to the librarian who was wheeling a cart of books around.

 

“Excuse me, where’s the ladies room? Also, is there a water fountain around here?” She kept her voice at a whisper, waving at him to catch his attention.

 

He looked up from his work, his sandy-brown bangs brushing against his wire-rimmed glasses. “Still at it, huh? Ladies room is down that hall on the left. The drinking fountain is down there too.” He pointed the way for her. She nodded and thanked him.

 

After relieving herself and returning to the main floor a touch more refreshed, she was stopped by the same librarian. He waved her over and whispered, trying to avoid disturbing the patrons.

 

“Hey. You’ve been here a while and you looked frustrated. Did you need some help?”

 

Joey sighed and brushed a lock of hair from her face. “I don’t know. I’m not sure where to begin, really.”

 

He smiled disarmingly. “Give it a shot. Can’t hurt, can it?” He set a book back down on the cart.

 

“Well...alright. The lower level is pretty much deserted except for me, maybe it would be better to talk downstairs?”

 

“Sure,” he said, and followed her down the steps into the microfiche section.

 

There was a table to her left, and so she pulled out a chair and plopped down into it, exhausted. She dragged a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes. “I’m investigating a recent….incident.”

 

He sat in the chair opposite her and smirked. “An ‘incident.’ Sounds intriguing.”

 

Joey nodded wryly. “Well, it’s certainly strange. Yesterday night I saw a wounded man wheeled in to the hospital, pretty badly mutilated and screaming. This morning, I went back to the hospital to find out what happened to the guy, and I’m told he just vanished into thin air. Like maybe somebody took him without anybody noticing or....something. I’ve got a hunch that this is more than just some bizarre accident.”

 

He nodded, excitement and a bit of fear shining in his eyes. “And now?”

 

She sighed. “Well, now I’m at the microfiche, digging through old articles looking for accidents or murders that sound similar. Lacerations seem like they’d stand out, you know? But I’ve yet to find anything.”

 

He frowned and scratched the back of his head. “You know what? Now that you say it, I think….I think I remember something kind of like that, actually.”

 

Joey perked up. “Wait, really?”

 

He nodded vigorously, “I think so. A few years back...three, maybe four? Yeah I think it was four, this local family in the suburbs was totally missing after the cops found their house on fire. But it gets way weirder, more disturbing than that. In the house the cops found several bodies, hidden all over the place.”

 

Joey had never heard anything about this story. He cleared his throat and continued, “The family that owns the house are nowhere to be seen, all except the teen daughter, who was outside the burning house screaming that demons killed her family. Whatever that girl saw fucked her up so bad they had to stick her in the local asylum. They never did find the rest of the family. It was a bit of a sordid little ghost story passed around town for a few years until people sort of forgot about it. There were more odd details that I’d forgotten, but now that you mention what you saw, I remember there was this messed up bit about a body that was so mutilated the cops couldn’t get an I.D.”

 

Joey felt a thrill of morbid excitement go through her. “That….might be it. When did this happen? Where? What were their names?”

 

He laughed. “Slow down! I’m not sure, like I said it was about four years ago and I don’t remember much. But it happened in Greenwich. My folks live in that neighborhood.”

 

“Four years ago, in Greenwich. Got it. Thank you so much!” She put a friendly hand on his arm. “What’s your name, by the way?”

 

He smiled. “Andy. You?”

 

“Joey.”

 

Andy ran a hand through his bangs. “That’s a cute name. Sounds like name of a girl who used to get in trouble roughhousing the boys on the school playground.”

 

He was flirting. It was awkward, but she laughed. “Yeah, you could say that.”

 

\---

 

It had taken another hour, but with the relief of a weary miner who’d struck gold, Joey had finally found the article she was looking for in an old copy of The Evening Post, a small Greenwich newspaper dated December 18th, 1988:

 

**_Gruesome Murders In Local Suburb_ **

 

_Sources report yesterday that a local couple have gone missing under mysterious and disturbing circumstances. Monday night at 10pm the fire department received a call from a Greenwich resident who claimed their neighbor’s home was on fire. The middle-aged couple who owned the home, Larry Cotton, 45, and Julia Cotton, 44, were missing from the scene. Authorities were shocked when they discovered five long-dead corpses of unidentified middle-aged males in various places throughout the home._

 

_It is unclear at this time if the missing couple are unrecovered victims of these gruesome murders, or if they themselves were the perpetrators who had fled the scene. It was suggested to our sources that one of the bodies was so mutilated it’s identity will remain undetermined until forensic examination can be done._

 

_The only known survivor of the incident was Kirsty Cotton, age 20, Larry Cotton’s daughter from a previous marriage. Neighbors claim that the young Miss Cotton did not live on the property herself, but was spotted on scene outside the burning house by spectators, who overheard her hysterically shouting at police officers about “demons” that allegedly terrorized her family. Next-door neighbor Mrs. Agatha Clairmont claims that in the time she’d known the family, Miss Cotton displayed no prior unstable behaviors and had “seemed like a very cheerful and bright young woman.” The distraught girl was taken by police to The Channard Institute, where she will be assessed by psychiatrists before she is subjected to questioning._

 

_Sheriff Marcus Henderson made a statement to the public yesterday that “the department would get to the bottom of things,” and that “it would be best to avoid a panic.” Greenwich citizens are urged to keep their doors and windows locked and their securities systems on. Due to the profile of the five unidentified victims it is suggested that men of middle age remain vigilant until the perpetrators are caught. The Evening Post will investigate deeper into the incident and keep readers updated._

  


Unfortunately, this was the last article on the matter. She searched through a few months after the incident, and found nothing.

 

Joey jotted down a copy of the article for later reference, put away her work, and hurriedly left the library.

 


	3. Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Manhandling, Drugging, Frank Cotton

  
  


_ “Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;  _

_ And in the lowest deep a lower deep _

_ Still threatening to devour me opens wide, _

_ To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.” _

\- Milton, Paradise Lost

 

**Chapter Three:**

**Ghosts**

 

Hours after the television incident, as Kirsty lay awake watching the rain fade, she began to admit to herself that she already knew. 

 

For a very long time, she had dismissed the electrical oddities that surrounded her as nothing more than the quirks of a neglected, decrepit old building. It was easier that way, safer than admitting to herself that no puzzle box was needed for strange, frightening things to happen to her without warning. After all, if she accepted this to be true, would this mean she would spend her entire life enduring the acute paranoia that would accompany such unpredictable danger? 

 

Would it mean that the terror would never, ever end?

 

They seemed to happen mostly to her, specifically. At first, the incidents were light; in no way comparable to the horrors she had already witnessed. Easily explainable electrical failures, bad tv reception, pipes groaning behind the walls, voices of others echoing down the hallways, etcetera. All relatively normal occurrences that needed no further investigation. Light bulbs popping in their sockets were another matter, but again she stood by her denial as orderlies waved the incidents off and swept glass from her floor. The television incident was the last straw; she could no longer ignore what had been escalating for years.

 

Now that she had accepted her haunting as a reality, elements that had long gone unacknowledged were brought back to the forefront. 

 

After Channard’s death years ago, Kirsty began having nightmares. Most of the time she dreamt of her father’s skinned body dripping viscera on an attic floor, of Julia and Frank menacing her with switchblades and blood-red nails and mocking laughter. There were a hundred nighttimes of endlessly wandering, lost in the cold and desolate corridors of her own psyche. 

 

On occasion she would dream of the demons. More specifically, her dreaming mind would focus in on the dark priest who had seemed to lead them. He would speak to her in those dreams. Most of the time he merely repeated words she’d already heard from him; nothing but a frightening memory played back in her subconscious. Other times the words would change, become clearer. His dark voice would resonate in her head like a heavy wave, as if he spoke directly to her right there and then, rather than from hazy memories. Stranger still, that voice would fluctuate. At times it would be the booming inhuman drawl of the demon, his tone mocking and full of dark promise. Other times that voice would transform into the similar yet warmer dulcet of a human man, somehow soothing her frantic mind. 

 

To be sure, dreams of Frank menacing her or of reliving her father’s death were distressing in the extreme, but she found no surprises there. It was always the dreams of the Hell Priest which unsettled her more than the others. Those dreams left her shaken by conflicting emotions that she could not reconcile, nor dare to acknowledge.

 

Upon waking, she could never seem to recall what it was that he said. In retrospect, she wondered if requesting medication for her nightmares was the correct choice. She had not dreamt of anything in almost two years now. A part of Kirsty knew better than to dismiss her dreams. Her mother had always told her to pay close attention to the ones that seemed most vivid, just in case. 

 

It was why she’d been so frantic over the dream about her father’s corpse all those years ago. That was the first time in her life that she truly believed her mother’s warnings. It was why she’d known to steal an old photograph of a man who’s face she’d seen in a dream, the one that had woken her with tears. Perhaps it had even been why Frank was able to manifest himself here and manipulate her into Hell, now that she considered it.

 

After the accident, Kirsty had hoped that her mother’s tall tales of prophetic dreams and sixth senses were nothing more than the occasional whimsical imaginings of a free spirited woman who liked to tell herself she had such abilities. It wasn’t exactly unheard of for some people to imagine themselves special in such a way. Her father had always chuckled and cupped her mother’s cheek, too affectionately amused at his wife’s broad imagination to verbalize his disbelief and shatter her illusions. As she got older, Kirsty would giggle just as lovingly at her mother.  _ Okay, Mom, sure.  _ Her mother would smile mysteriously at her family’s dismissal.  _ Just you wait. One day, you’ll see! You never know, Kirsty. Maybe you inherited it. I got it from my mom, too.  _

 

It broke her just a little, to contend with just how much those sweet, silly memories of her mother’s dreamy nonsense had been so cruelly demonstrated to her as a reality now. 

 

The voice that had come through her television’s static was unmistakable. It occurred to her that perhaps those strange dreams of that dark Priest were more than they had seemed. Was he, or rather the man he’d once been, trying to contact her? Had it been him, all along, who was responsible for everything that had been happening? Perhaps her rejection and suppression of the dreams necessitated that he find other means of speaking to her. What message was so important?

 

She did not know how she felt about any of it. The demon had terrified her. She would have nothing to do with that world anymore, and the idea of being unable to escape it and  _ him _ filled her with a sense of dread. On the other hand, in their last moments together, once she had broken past the demonic and awoken the human soul suffocated underneath it, he had fought for her and sacrificed himself in her defense. She did not fully understand what aspect of this being she was dealing with currently, or _ how _ , and those ambiguities were unsettling in themselves. If it was indeed the human man’s soul who was now haunting her...what was it that he so desperately needed to say? Was this just another trick, like Frank? 

 

Kirsty had obsessively thought on this and the events of the day for far too long, and had emotionally exhausted herself. She pulled her threadbare covers over her head and curled further into a fetal position, resolutely refusing to even glance at the television that she had unplugged hours before.

 

\----

 

“Time to wake up, Kirsty.” 

 

A hand lightly shook her shoulder. Kirsty sighed in resignation and turned herself around to greet Nurse Appleton, who was standing ready with Kirsty’s little cup of water and daily medications.

 

“Good morning, Kirsty.” Ever since Kirsty had known her, Appleton always had a very no-nonsense demeanor. She wore her greying ginger hair up in a tightly pinned bun, and her uniform was always pristinely pressed. Her glasses were black-rimmed and rectangular; chosen for quality and functionality over fashion. Appleton wasn’t the apathetic or cruel sort like some of the orderlies working here, but Kirsty could not exactly call her a cheerful woman. Rather, Appleton came across like a strict old governess. She had no tolerance for any behavior that was out of order, but carried within her a kindness that someone unfamiliar with her might have missed.

 

“G’morning, Ms. Appleton.” Kirsty took the plastic cup of meds from Appleton’s outstretched hand. Bleary-eyed, she lifted the cup to her lips to drop them into her mouth, but stopped herself at the little flash of color rolling at the bottom. Next to her usual white and beige pills lay an unfamiliar dark red gel capsule. Kirsty felt her stomach flip.

 

“Ms. Appleton?”

 

Appleton pursed her lips at Kirsty in confusion, ready to reprimand a disobedient patient. “Yes, Kirsty?” The tone of her voice was lenient but unamused.

 

“What’s the little red pill? I don’t recognize it.” Kirsty rattled the cup.

 

“Dr. Daniels is prescribing you something new. It’s supposed to replace your anti-hallucinatory medication.”

 

Kirsty grimaced. She knew ( _ she hoped, god she hoped _ ) she didn’t have hallucinations. She also knew it was dangerous for someone without those symptoms to be taking these types of medications. The previous medications they’d been giving her didn’t seem to cause her any adverse side-effects, but would a new medication do so? She certainly didn’t want to find out. 

 

She was also wary of the motives behind this particular change in routine. She was sure Daniels didn’t believe a word of the bullshit he spewed at her. Daniels in no way truly believed she was sick. A change in meds sounded like bad news. What was he trying to force her to swallow now? Was this just another power game to punish her for yesterday’s outburst? 

 

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She’d just have to bite the bullet. Kirsty took a deep breath and put the pills in her mouth. Appleton handed her the cup of water, which she gulped down with her pills quickly.

 

“There you go. Now you head on down to the cafeteria, dear.” Appleton nodded to her and wheeled her little metal cart back out the door.

 

Kirsty sighed to herself in the quiet of her room. The sunlight cheerfully shone through her windows, glinting off the dusty surface of the television screen.

 

She took a moment to regard it warily. In the morning light, it seemed innocuous and non-threatening; nothing more than an inanimate object. Now she knew better.

 

She considered what she had just last night come to accept. If the anomalies she’d experienced were indeed the man who had been the Hell Priest trying to contact her, then perhaps that would mean electricity was required for him to do so. And that would also mean that the television was the closest he’d come to initiating that contact.

 

Ultimately, as wary as she was, she recognised that this man had sacrificed himself to save her life. Perhaps that meant he deserved the chance to say whatever it is he needed to say to her, at the very least. 

 

Kirsty walked hesitantly over to the little television, reached behind it, and plugged it back into the wall. She stepped back and peered at the blank screen for a moment before pushing the power button. A faint electric whine met her ears, and her proximity to the television made the delicate hairs on her arm stand on end. The tingling static felt like a whisper of breath against her forearm.

 

In the glaring sunlight the screen became much dimmer and harder to see. Some morning book show was airing, she could make out the image of a blonde woman in a beige pencil skirt interviewing an authoress in a set of matching armchairs. Kirsty trained her ears on the noise, tuning out the boring conversation and intent on listening for anything...out of the ordinary.

 

She spent several minutes like this, but there was nothing. Sighing, she wandered back over to her bed and plopped down frustratedly. She kept her eyes on the TV. 

 

“You can talk to me, you know. I figured it out and I get it, I’m sorry. I’m listening now.”

 

She waited, and still no sign of activity.

 

“Just tell me what you want.”

 

Nothing.

 

She sighed once more in annoyance. “Well now you’re just making me feel like an idiot.”

 

“Kirsty?”

 

Kirsty jumped at the feminine voice at the door. Appleton was peeking her head in, and she had a startled, wide-eyed look on her face. “Kirsty, I thought I told you to head down to breakfast. You’re the only one who hasn’t left your room yet.” Appleton had just watched Kirsty speaking to her television.

 

“I...I will, Ms. Appleton. I was just…. getting ready.” 

 

Appleton pursed her lips. “Of course. Hurry up then, it’s important to eat your meals.” 

 

Kirsty nodded, and Appleton backed out of the door once more.

 

_ Fantastic. _

 

\---

 

Kirsty sat at her usual table with Merriweather. The old woman was shakily spooning goopy oatmeal into her gummy mouth, sometimes unsuccessfully. Kirsty swirled her own spoon around the lukewarm oats on her plastic plate, grimacing down at the grey, tasteless mass. She could gore an orderly with the very spoon in her hand for a little more sugar, or some fucking cinnamon.

 

She heard a few of her fellow inmates break out into laughter at the table across the room to her left. Merriweather jumped in her seat, a spoonful of goop plopping sickly onto the scratched white linoleum of the lunch table. Kirsty handed Merriweather the wad of napkins that she’d grabbed earlier for just such an occasion. “Thank you dear,” Merriweather murmured, then began mopping up her mess. 

 

Kirsty raised her plastic cup of slightly sketchy-tasting orange juice to her mouth. As suddenly as if it had always been there, Kirsty felt a shadow loom over her left shoulder. Turning to look at whomever was standing beside her, she found herself face to face with Uncle Frank, wearing his dirty white tank top and covered in sweat as if he hadn’t changed one bit since before she’d burned him with hellfire. There was a sick, rageful, leering smirk on his face, his switchblade in hand. Kirsty’s stomach dropped. Her breath caught in her throat and the orange juice fell from her shaking fingers to the dirty floor. Merriweather stared at her in alarm.

 

“Miss me?” Frank said, and slashed out towards Kirsty violently with his blade. Kirsty leapt to her feet and jumped back, screaming. That was when the cafeteria erupted into chaos. Patients began screaming and shouting. People were shuffling and stumbling out of their seats, scrambling to get away from the young woman’s frightening outburst.

 

Kirsty payed them little attention. She was far too focused on her seemingly unkillable uncle, who began crowding and chasing her like a predatory animal. “Did you think you’d get away that easy, you stupid little bitch? Did you think I’d let you go _ scott fuckin’ free _ after all the trouble you caused me?”

 

She backed away between two tables. More patients scattered out of her way. “Leave me the  _ fuck _ alone!” She grabbed the closest dishware in her line of sight and started throwing things in his direction. He managed to side-step everything. “Get the hell away from me!” She continued to throw any object within the vicinity in his direction, but nothing ever seemed to hit.

 

Frank laughed in her face, close enough that she could smell his hot breath inches away. He did not grab her, but directed his blade towards her face so she could see it as he menaced her. “Oh, Kirsty. I’m  _ never _ gonna do that.” He moved to slice at her once more. “ _ Never.” _

 

That was when his image completely dissipated into nothing. Kirsty stopped her backpedaling and stood still, wide-eyed and hyperventilating. She looked around her. Patients were staring at her in fear. A handful of them were crying, including poor Merriweather, who trembled in her seat. A trail of debris and skewed tables were in Kirsty’s wake. Several orderlies were closing in behind her.

 

“I’m not...I didn’t...please...didn’t anyone else see him?” Her voice wobbled and tapered off into a quiet little murmur. She felt hot tears well up in her eyes, and she wrapped her arms around herself. 

 

One of the orderlies took her by the arm in a firm grip and directed her to the cafeteria doors. Several more came to crowd around her as they moved. Standing in the threshold was Daniels, who waited there with an inscrutable look on his face. He turned and made his way down the hallway, the orderlies following with Kirsty in tow. 

 

It was not until they reached the east wing elevator that she realized where they were headed. 

 

The Maintenance levels. Terror suffused her body, and she began to struggle out of the orderly’s grip. The others moved to hold her firmly in place. “Let me go! Please, why are you taking me here?!” 

 

Daniels regarded her coldly as they all crowded into the dank old elevator. He pushed the dreaded ‘Maintenance’ button. “I think it’s about time we took a little trip downstairs together, don’t you?”

 

Kirsty began to sob. This was it. She thought her life was already over, but Hell had more levels than that. In the lowest deep, a lower deep. 

 

“Daniels. Daniels, please. I don’t know what happened. You...you gave me new medication I think they must have made me hallucinate or something, you’ve got to believe me!  _ Please!”  _ She thrashed towards him desperately and the thugs surrounding her pulled back with bruising grips.

 

Daniels was silent for a long moment as he stared at her across the tiny space. Then a dark, ugly little smirk grew on his face. “I  _ do _ believe you, Kirsty.”

  
  


She let out a harsh breath and furrowed her brow in confusion. “What?”

 

Daniels looked away from her as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open. He stalked out into the dim, humid hallway. Kirsty gaped at her surreal environment. Massive steaming water pipes lined the left wall, trailing off into what could have been infinite nowhere. To her right, black steel bolted doors with tiny barred windows lined the wall. As they passed each door, she could hear banging and screaming prisoners begging to be released from their solitary confinement. Was this the next stage of her torment? An eternity of agonizing solitude in a boiling-hot basement? She trembled as her sobs trailed off into silent tears. 

 

As they proceeded down the nightmarish hallway she began to notice water leaking from the pipes, pooling into an inky black puddle that seemed to grow and grow until she was ankle-deep in it, sloshing through cold water. The orderlies sloshed with her. Daniels seemed entirely unperturbed ahead of her. What the hell was happening? Why were they ignoring the flooding?

 

Finally, Daniels slammed open a set of double doors, making Kirsty’s head snap up and back to reality. The flooded hallway floor was suddenly as dry any other in the building. Kirsty hiccuped at the realization that the waters were nothing more than another hallucination, too. God, what was happening to her?

 

They entered the new room in silence. At the center of the room lay a padded gourney with straps. Kirsty, growing weaker and more delirious by the moment, was lifted up and strapped onto the table. 

 

:”Thank you, you can go.” The men filtered out of the room, leaving Kirsty and Daniels alone. 

 

“...Please just tell me what the hell is going on, Daniels,” she whispered brokenly. He was pressing little wired stick-um pads all over her forehead. 

 

“I was getting a little tired of it, Kirsty.” He wasn’t looking at her, but rather the work he made himself busy with.

 

“Tired? Of what?” 

 

“I’m tired of this little game, Kirsty. I want more answers, and I’m sick of fighting with you for them.” He was switching on a series of electronic panels against the right wall. “In all honesty Kirsty, you’re not our only asset. We’ve got a few more sources of information tucked away here and there. See, some of the boys upstairs think you’re a bit of a let down.”

 

Kirsty let out a bitter scoff at him. “Go on then Daniels. Tell me your whole evil plan.”

 

Daniels laughed. “See, right there. You piss me the hell off a regular basis, but at least you’ve got a sense of fucking humor.” 

 

Daniel’s gave a long suffering sigh and waved a care-free hand in acquiescence. “Alright then. The others-” Kirsty was dying to know who these ‘others’ were “-think you’re just some stupid little girl who got caught in the crossfire because your uncle couldn’t do what he was paid to. They think Channard threw the cart before the horse and got himself taken or killed, and you had nothing to do with it. That’s why they want you to stay here, held under lock and key indefinitely. You’re a useless asset, a piece of history for the archive. A curio in a display case. But _ I  _ know better, Kirsty.” 

 

She stared him down. His face was blurring back and forth between his usual self and Frank’s leering visage, now. She did her best to ignore the hallucinatory images. 

 

“See, I’ve been listening to your little story. Over and over again, I’ve listened, and absorbed.” He sniffed, the humidity irritating his sinuses. “I’ve got tapes. And there’s this one detail, back from before you stopped telling me the truth. Back when you were too stupid to be afraid of telling us how it really happened.”

 

The walls had begun to leak, at least in Kirsty’s distorted perception. She could hear the trickling water slowly filling up the floor. Daniels-Frank ran a hand through his hair, a syringe-switchblade in hand. “You told us that you opened the box, right Kirsty? It opened for you. But see, according to what we know, according to every single god damn account in the entire archive, you shouldn’t even fucking _ be _ here, should you?”

 

She shook her head, the wires moving with her. “Daniels...Daniels what-!?” He cut her off. 

 

“It’s against the rules, Kirsty. You open the box, you get taken. Your soul belongs to whatever’s on the other side. The Old God, Leviathan, fucking Beelzebub, who-the-fuck-knows. What I wanna know, Kirsty, is how exactly you got to see what was on the other side, and then were _ set free _ .”

 

He leaned in close and hovered his face above her, tapping his needle-blade against her cheek. “And I’m willing to put money on this little theory I’ve got cooking that you did it _ twice _ .”

 

Kirsty sucked in a breath. The one thing she’d never told anybody about was the deal she’d made. She was too ashamed of herself to admit that she’d bargained away a family member’s soul to keep herself out of Hell. Nevermind how monstrous Frank really was; the very act of bargaining with other people’s souls made her come out looking a little less than virtuous. So she refrained from disclosing that aspect of events. She claimed that the demons she encountered after opening the box had  _ demanded _ Frank’s return in exchange for her soul. Far better that, than to implicate herself. They’d judged her more than enough.

 

In retrospect, it should have been obvious to her that it was Daniels’ obsession with this question that had driven him to make her repeat her story over and over again in their little “therapy” sessions. He wasn’t trying to implicate her in a murder, he was trying to pump her for more information. For that matter, Daniels should know nothing about her involvement with the Channard incident. Kirsty let the evidence of Channard’s actions speak for themselves, and uttered not a peep regarding her own involvement (or Tiffany’s, for that matter). Daniels had tried to sneak in a few implicatory questions about Channard’s disappearance, but she’d been otherwise kept out of the loop on the fallout of whatever evidence was found in Channard’s home. She wondered now if that crime scene had in fact been scrubbed clean by Daniels and his allies. With building horror, she realized that this would mean Daniels, or ‘the others,’ had their hands on all those puzzle boxes, save the one Tiffany dropped in Hell. All this time, she’d thought they were safe gathering dust, untouched in some evidence file on a police office shelf.

 

Daniels rolled up her sleeve and pressed the needle into the crook of her forearm. She winced and the tears in her eyes blurred her vision. She let them; she’d rather not watch. Instead she tried to focus in on the trickling hallucinatory flood waters, which had now somehow become the most soothing noise in the room. She hoped they would drown Daniels and swallow her up forever.

 

“I built a little cocktail just for you, Kirsty. That first dose was a bit of trial-and-error, slash to cause a scene and give me a reason to drag you down here. We’re gonna top it up a bit, hmm? I want you to start talking. We’re going to go over your story once more, and you’re going to tell me everything, _everything,_ that you’ve held back from me.” 

 

A new wave of silent sobs washed over her. There was nothing more to say, or think, or do, there was nothing left but the resignation to endure this new level of torment. Kirsty let her vision blur and obscure more with tears, and that was when she felt a firm hand gently grasp her jaw and tilt her face to her left, away from where Daniels stood.

 

Kirsty blinked the tears from her eyes and tried to focus. Standing above her, semi-transparent and flickering in and out of visual existence, was that distinguished soldier from the old photograph she’d stolen so long ago. He peered down at her, his face twisted into a worried, furious frown. His hand still held her jaw, keeping her gaze and attention locked on him. She opened her mouth to speak, but the minute a breath of noise left her throat, he moved his fingers to cover her mouth lightly. “Do not speak; do not let him know that you see me, Kirsty.” His voice had a strange echoing quality and would phase between loud and faint, depending on whether he was fully visually perceptible from one moment to the next.

  
Kirsty flicked her gaze to Daniels, who was shuffling items and papers on a nearby countertop, looking away from her.

 

She brought her gaze back and ever so slightly nodded her head in acquiescence, just enough for him to feel the movement but not enough for Daniels to notice. The soldier moved to stand a bit closer and brought both hands up to delicately cup the sides of her face, the warm sensation effectively distracting her and blocking out the rest of the room from her perception. It was a small and technically useless gesture, but in that moment it meant everything to Kirsty, who had not felt this shielded in years. 

 

“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Kirsty.” God, she wanted to. She wanted to cling to him in this moment like a rock in the ocean, but how could she when he was flickering in and out of existence like he was? “I do not know how long what he’s given you will effect you. You are halfway between wakefulness and dreaming, right now. That’s why you can see me. I believe you are going to fall asleep, and he will try to drag your dreaming mind back through the events of the past. I will try to...follow you...Kirsty…” It was like he was a record, slowing down. He was solidly standing in the room now, but her vision itself was tunneling and fading into darkness.

 

Just before her consciousness faded completely, she could hear Daniels once more from her right. 

 

“Alright then, Kirsty. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”

  
  
  



	4. Philomela

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Manhandling, Frank Cotton

_ “By night, beloved, tie your heart to mine _

_ and let them both in dreams defeat the darkness.” _

_—_ _Pablo Neruda_

 

**Chapter Four:**

**Philomela**

 

Mike sold the nightingale. 

 

Kirsty frowned as she swept up dust and birdseed. That bird should have never been sold. It should have never been caged, period, but Mike cared little for the ethics of animal ownership, as long as a good buck was to be earned and no legal trouble was to be found. So, he sold the bird. 

 

This job was hectic. She couldn’t say she was fond of the petshop’s sleezeball owner, but on the slow days, when the place was clean and the animals calm, she found a sort of peace here. Particularly because of the nightingale. She didn’t know how Mike had come to own the bird, but it came in on the same day she did, and she had a soft spot for the poor thing ever since. In the early days it was restless; ramming its tiny, frantic body against its confines in desperate rebellion. She would whisper soothingly to it and feed it crickets and mealworms, tried to be patient. It couldn’t help its pain. Eventually it calmed, but it never sang in its captivity. This greatly frustrated Mike, who figured a nightingale that actually  _ sang _ like it was supposed to would be a good selling point. She hoped its new home would be kinder than this place had been.

 

Unbidden, the memory of an old song came to her. Something Disney.  _ Sing, sweet nightingale, sing, sweet nightingale… _

 

Smirking wryly, she thought about grim, imposing Julia. A woman built from sharp lines and bitter glares. She could imagine Julia lurking disapprovingly in some glooming shadow, sinister eyes reflecting the light while she inspected blood red fingernails. Kirsty hummed along to the tune in her head as she swept more filth from the floor.

 

She knew it wasn’t fair to compare Julia to mom. Julia was a strong and modern woman, and her inability to give Kirsty the motherly warmth she craved wasn’t reason to resent her. Julia was just a different type of woman, that’s all, one who wasn’t predisposed to motherhood. Julia was in their lives to be her father’s wife. Kirsty had already been raised well enough, and she knew it wasn’t fair to expect more from Julia than what she was capable of giving. It wasn’t fair to resent her for it, either. It always seemed that it was Julia who resented  _ her  _ however, almost from the beginning. 

 

Kirsty’s hands stopped moving the broom, and her knuckles whitened as cold settled into the pit of her stomach. 

 

A gleaming switchblade flashed behind her eyes. A stairwell with peeling yellow wallpaper. A rotting attic. A glow behind wooden slats. 

 

The doorbell jingled. “Kirsty, hey!”

 

_ Saved by the bell. _ With a sigh of relief, Kirsty turned to greet Steve. “Hey Steve!”

Her father hadn’t stopped singing Steve’s praises since the guy started working at the company. It didn’t hurt that Steve was charming and immediately took a liking to her, which her father seemed to greatly approve of. Right now, distracted from her thoughts, she was feeling pretty good about him too.

 

“How’s work going?” He leaned awkward-casually against a precarious, overstuffed shelf, hands in his pockets.

 

She hid a grin and pretended to sweep. “Not too bad today. Lots of cleaning, mostly.”

 

Steve shifted and some stock shifted with him. “Well...I was wondering if you might want to go to dinner down at Martinelli’s tonight. Thought we could celebrate over a bottle of wine…”

 

Kirsty snorted. “Steve, I’m still twenty, I can’t drink for another year.”

 

He laughed and delicately pushed her shoulder. “Come on Kirsty, live a little. Break a rule or two.”

 

Kirsty shook her head at him and laughed. “Won’t they card me?”

 

Steve let out a little chuckle. “So that’s a yes, I take it?”

 

Kirsty didn’t hide her grin this time. “Alright, it’s a yes. Wait, what are we celebrating?”

 

He preened, running his fingers through his sandy brown hair. “Oh, nothing. Just the fact that Larry gave me that promotion I was hoping for this morning…”

 

Kirsty was shocked. “What? A promotion! Dad gave you that promotion so early? Steve that’s amazing!”

 

His grin was cheesy, all teeth, and he hooked his thumbs into his coat lapel. “Well, nobody can sucker in a new client like I can, wouldn’t you like to know…”

 

She rolled her eyes at him. “No, I wouldn’t like to know, you cheeseball!”

 

“If you two kids are done, I’ve got a shop to keep running.” Mike’s gruff voice juttered from behind the counter into their bubble, and they stepped away from each other. 

 

“Sorry Mike!” Kirsty called out. Softer, she whispered: “Sorry, Steve. We’ll catch up later, ok?” 

 

Steve nodded a yes, his cheesy grin making her heart flutter a little. Kirsty gave him her most flirtatious smile, winked, and turned back to her sweeping as Steve wandered back out the door.

 

Kirsty’s sweeping hands gave way to a watery swish in a warm bath, frothy bubbles and sparkling droplets trickling through her fingers. The heat enveloping her skin was comforting and sensuous, so she slid further beneath the surface. Kirsty had already washed away the smears of blood from her body, thrown the stained white shirt in the kitchen trash bin. Her father had not answered the phone. Why was she here?

 

She moved her hand irreverently through the waters again. Through hooded, barely open eyes, Kirsty watched contentedly as a masculine hand, one she did not recognize as Steve’s, reached out and tentatively swished the surface of her bath, then disappeared completely from her view.

 

There was a quiet coo from the corner of the room, and Kirsty looked up to where she’d left the nightingale, caged by the old stained sink. It fluttered and preened its wings. Shifting her legs underneath the bathwater, she felt her foot brush against something hard and sharply angular. The object dragged against the porcelain, and she felt the little resonating noise it made more than heard it, muffled as it was by her bath. 

 

Curious, Kirsty pushed bubbles and pale feathers away from the surface, trying to peer beneath the waters to see. It was too dark, near black, and so she reached deep to grab hold of the object. What she found when her hand breached the surface was a small box with intricate gilding, the etchings glistening wetly against its ebony surface. Water seemed to have done it no damage. Fascinated by the thing, she turned it back and forth between her hands, looking for any opening. She moved it closer to the dozens of tall burning candles that covered the dry surfaces of her bathroom, hoping the extra light would help her see some opening. The hand she saw earlier seemed to have reached back out to grip her right arm tightly. Was it a warning? Did he want her to stop? 

 

Kirsty looked up, intending to face the man who tried to interfere, but there was no one. Only an empty apartment bedroom, a chill breeze wafting through the white curtains she hung in her window not days ago. The air brushed the white nightgown she wore against her knees, and she pulled her hands closer to her chest for warmth. Within them she still clutched the box.

 

The nightingale seemed to react to the brush of wind against its feathers. It was beating its wings frantically as if the breeze could lift it free from its prison. She ignored it - there were more important matters to attend to. Kirsty brought her attention back to the gleaming box. Turning it back and forth, she searched for buttons or seams, some sort of clue as to its inner mechanisms. She did not understand this overwhelming urge to solve the puzzle, the low burn of suspense in the potential discoveries. Nevertheless, she let it pull her towards her goal. She felt the small golden circles at its sides give way to her clever, searching fingers, and a thrill shot up her spine. 

 

The breeze seemed to become a howling wind, as if the walls of her apartment had become as porous as the mesh of her window screen.The flames of many candles trembled and flickered.  Kirsty’s nightshift fluttered wildly against her bare legs. The nightingale had given its mind over to some frantic, ecstatic emotion, throwing its fragile body against the claustrophobic metal cage, lost to its own madness and begging for release. 

 

Ignoring the bird, Kirsty further explored the puzzle box, searching for the next step. Finally, she discovered that one could lightly follow their fingers along a thin etched path, then drag them in a delicious swirl around a turning circle that clicked delicately at the center of the top side. 

 

Suddenly, Kirsty yelped at a spark of light and the electric bite of pleasure-pain that jolted from the box to her hand and back down her spine. She dropped the thing to the floor in alarm, and it rolled to sit ominously a few feet before her. An inviting, tinkling music-box melody began to chime out while the box split upwards in jagged slices, twirled clockwise, and returned to its cube shape. Kirsty stared at it in silence, alarmed by an ominous familiarity that she could not place.

 

The wind began to scream, her hair whipped about her face. Books clattered to the floor, pictures and posters lifted from her wall and rode the billowing air. The birdcage crashed to the floor, and the little door that kept the nightingale inside broke open. She flew out, finally free. Kirsty watched the bird flutter around her bedroom, where it for the first time began to sing a sweet little triumphant song. 

 

Then there was a loud, echoing crack as the wall before her split open. wood splintered and drywall crumbled until there was a yawning abyss revealed between the parted bedroom walls. Kirsty stood in awe, peering fearfully down an endless stone corridor that did not belong. Looking into it gave her a sense of incredible vertigo, as if those stone walls did not lead forward but  _ downward _ . An eternal fall.

 

The nightingale caught her attention as it suddenly flew towards the opening and proceeded deep into the corridor until it could no longer be seen. Kirsty felt something inside herself jolt in horror for the poor bird; would it be forever lost? The thought brought on a strange compulsion to follow after it into the dark hall, and sate her curiosity in the meantime. She grit her teeth against the urge, but felt herself slowly step forward anyway. At least, that is, until she felt invisible hands grasp her arms before her in an attempt to keep her where she stood. She could just faintly hear a muffled sound, like a voice shouting in the distance. She rejected it, pushed against the grip until whoever or whatever it was gave in and moved out of her way. 

 

Then Kirsty was passing the threshold into darkness. The grey stone was ice-cold against her bare, unprotected feet. There was a faint light illuminating the passage that bounced off the walls, but she could not detect the origin. It was just enough to light her way. She felt a strange exhilaration build within her, an excitement for the unknown that mingled with the ominous pit of fear in her stomach. The hallway blended together until time began to fade from her perception. It could have been minutes or hours that she walked before the hall finally gave way to another threshold.

 

Upon passing it, Kirsty discovered a vast empty chamber of space much like an inverted skyscraper; as if an immense cubed slice had been removed entirely from an ancient multi-storied stone building. Across the emptiness she could see floors upon floors which extended forever both upwards and downwards, all filled with the same grey stone hallways, corridors, and stairways leading to unknown places. If she looked downwards, the floors stretched on into darkness. If she looked up past the many stories above her, she could see what looked like a starless night sky, faintly illuminated by a celestial body she could not see from her low vantage point. Something inside of her was grateful for the cover the stone provided, and she wondered why she should feel such relief for not being exposed to a moon’s gaze.

 

It did not occur in this moment to Kirsty to think too hard about why she was making this journey, or whether this strange and terribly familiar landscape should be abandoned for the safety of her apartment. She only knew that she had a great urge to continue despite her fear, and so she proceeded further. The moment she stepped more than a foot onto the adjacent walkway however, a series of fire-lit sconces burst to life down a stairway to her left, leading to another open threshold. Clearly, there was a specific direction she was meant to proceed towards. Kirsty did so, following the light obediently towards a new, unknown destination. She kept her left hand against the stone wall as there was no railing to her right, only a vast emptiness that could so easily swallow her up if she were to trip and fall from the stairs. 

 

Eventually, she reached the bottom of the stairwell. She proceeded through the open hall only to come upon what seemed to be an empty foyer, which was otherwise unadorned save for the flickering torches that illuminated the space brightly. In the back wall to her left there was a tall, wide open doorway that revealed another black void. It was difficult to see the dark room beyond due to the brightness of the torchlight, so Kirsty crept towards the space. She could almost assume there was pure nothingness beyond the threshold, but far into the room she could just barely make out a tall pillar illuminated by a patch of dim moonlight. It looked to be adorned with a vague design etched or painted onto the front face, but she could not make it out from where she stood.

 

The feeling in her gut told her that this room was where she needed to be. After all, it was where the light had led her. So she tentatively stepped forward into the void.

 

With surprise, Kirsty’s eyes shot down to her feet, which were now half-submerged beneath a skin of liquid that covered the ground surface here. It was as black as the room itself however, and so she saw nothing but the nightgown that still recieved some dim yellow light from the torches in the room prior. Proceeding, she discovered that it was strangely humid here, yet there was an occasional breeze of air that brushed against her hair and gown. There was the sound of trickling water and the faint breathy woosh of air. Still, it was far too dark for her to understand the sources of any of it. The only way to continue her journey was forward, towards the moonlit obelisk. 

 

As she walked, her nightgown had become sodden at the hem by the liquid she had sloshed through. She could feel the wet edges stick to her ankles with every movement. Kirsty wondered where the nightgown had even come from. She realized that she did not recognise it. She also didn’t remember why she had even put it on before...before…

 

The dawning feeling of  _ wrongness _ suffused her heart, though she did not know why.

 

Kirsty looked up, and realized with a start that she had finally reached her destination. Perhaps ten feet from where she stood, the obelisk loomed impossibly tall before her. Up this close, the smooth grey marble gleamed brightly against the pitch dark, tiny crystalline grains of quartz sparkling from within the stone like stars. She could see the etching clearly now. It was a strange inverted relief in the shape of an elongated diamond, sunk maybe two inches into the stone. Fainter etchings of foreign glyphs were written over the shape’s entire inner surface, the whole of which was painted with a red-brown color. It looked as though it had been repainted with the same substance many times over; perhaps in an act of ritual maintenance. 

 

Below the obelisk itself the floor was raised a step above the ground level. Just below the face of the pillar there was a large horizontal slab of less ornate stone. It stood at waist-height if one were stand upon the platform. On either side of the slab stood unlit torch sconces, waiting for fire. 

 

An altar.

 

The longer she stared at the image of the ruddy-brown shape, the more she felt as if it was alive, as if it was a great eye that was looking at her, could see _ through _ her. Not just her thoughts and dreams and desires, but the blood and bone and gristle of her soft and delicate flesh. Every single thing that she was on her insides.

 

Her knees wobbled, and suddenly she could feel how thin an unprotective her gown was, how bare her feet were. She was small; fragile prey thoughtlessly wandering into the domain of a towering behemoth, asking to be devoured.

 

She turned to abandon this place, wanting to scurry back through the stone hallways and into the safety of her apartment. That was when heavy doors slammed shut with an echoing boom, snuffing out the light of the entryway. 

 

And then, the deep tolling of a bell. A call to mass.

 

Kirsty stood paralysed and surrounded by silence but for the ominous bell, unsure of where to run or hide. She knew this...she  _ knew _ this…!

 

Suddenly there was a clacking noise in the dark before her, chittering like teeth. She stepped back away from it, and it was only when the creature stepped into the beam of moonlight that she knew the noise was indeed the clicking of teeth, _ its  _ teeth. Stretched lips were peeled and stapled back against the subhuman face, revealing the wet, bloodied gums and white teeth of a horrid, humanoid creature that chattered its maimed jaw at her. It grabbed at her arms like a vice, and she screamed and tried to tear herself away. Her scream echoed throughout the massive black chamber, bouncing off walls she could not see.

 

The awful creature ushered her forwards to stand mere feet before the altar and obelisk. It kept its grip around her arms, keeping her hostage to the spot. 

 

That was when more beings began to filter into the room, emerging slowly from the dark behind the obelisk. Some held torches of their own, and as they reached more of the dark space they illuminated sconces that were previously hidden from Kirsty’s view. The beings were grotesque; their bodies mutilated to such an extent that they barely resembled people. They had all adorned themselves in black leather, and their bodies were covered in metal accoutrements that pierced and sliced into their skin. Even through her horror, Kirsty was stricken most by the incongruous grace of their movements, and the intentional artfulness of their mutilations. Each individual looked utterly unique as much as they were a cohesive part of a disturbing community.

 

She watched in awe, her breath rushing hastily through her throat. She could see now that there were several fountains within the chamber, the source of the trickle she heard earlier. Sat upon the center of each were a small group of what looked to be statues bound together by chains and barbed wire, until Kirsty realized that these statues were in fact  _ breathing _ . The people bound to the fountain seemed dazed, dreamy. Their barely covered skin glistened in the humid firelight. They let out occasional breaths and sighs as they shifted against their sharp, unforgiving bonds. And the water that trickled in these fountains? It was blood, slowly and endlessly being drained from the living centerpieces.

 

Kirsty looked down at her feet. As she suspected, the liquid she stood in was indeed that same blood, and it had stained her white nightgown irreparably. Her mind drifted hazily for a moment, unable to sustain the intense terror that had arrested her for so many minutes.

 

From the direction of the obelisk came the smooth, light patter of booted feet against stone. A female with a gash in her throat was lighting the sconces aside the altar. Once she was done, she took her place silently, stood still upon the platform in front and to the left of the slab.

 

One more being finally emerged from the dark. This one was male; tall and imposing even among these unsettling creatures. His head was adorned with gleaming pins in a grid-like pattern. Black eyes locked themselves upon her, and she shivered as her own gaze shied away from his. The hem of his leather cassock nearly touched the floor as he moved, and this almost made it seem as if he floated as he walked, were it not for the heavy click of boots upon the stone. He stopped front and center before the altar, standing as elegant and regal as he was grotesque. 

 

_ A priest _ , she thought. _ I know this. I remember this! _

 

That was when she noticed that he held something before his chest. It shifted in his fingers, and with a shock Kirsty realized that it was the poor nightengale that she had followed into this strange underworld. The bird was surprisingly calm and still, cupped as it was in the priest’s hands. Its pale brown feathers looked nearly stark white against his black leathers, lit as it was by the moonlight shining above the infernal altar. It preened at its left wing without any care that it was held by a creature that seemed to exist in pure violence. The priest was looking at the thing with an inscrutable expression, as if he was fascinated by something he’d never seen before. He stroked his finger down its back with a delicacy that shocked Kirsty. Finally, the bird flew off into the dark, and he seemed content to let it do as it pleased.* Then the priest brought his gaze back to Kirsty. She felt herself instinctively flinch and shift in the direction of the exit, and the creature at her back clenched its grip harder.

 

**“Did you think to hide from us, Kirsty?”**

 

Kirsty shook her head in denial, but no words emerged from her strangled throat.

 

**“Hell has already touched your spirit, child. Your mind can no longer escape its grasp. The rest will follow, in time.”**

 

Kirsty summoned what courage she could, looked him in the eye once more and yanked on the chatterer’s grip in vain. “My soul belongs to me! You agreed! Let me go!” 

 

_ What  _ agreement? Where were these words coming from?

 

There was a mocking glint to his dark eyes. **“The word that was given to you was ‘maybe.’ It was** **_you_ ** **who came to us a second time, was it not? And what of now? Perhaps your curiosity has still not been satisfied?”** Murmuring laughter whispered up from the congregation.

 

Kirsty shook her head, this time in confusion. “No...no I don’t….nothing is making any sense…” She felt tears well up in her eyes. If she could only remember the events that brought here here, then she might have a clue as to the dark familiarity of this strange and monstrous world she’d so determinedly wandered into.

 

He tilted his head at her, curious.  **“You have nearly let your mind whither and spoil, child. Far more than ripe for our harvest.*”** His voice boomed like an omen across the cavernous expanse of the room, and Kirsty felt its quake run through her bones.

 

The female beside him sliced two of her malevolent-looking blades together.  **“Then harvest we shall, before the fruit rots,*”** She hissed. The female began to advance in Kirsty’s direction, but the priest swiftly held up a hand to subdue her, and she settled down obediently.

 

The priest may have held his subordinate back, but he looked more than ready to execute his own checkmate. With a touch of pride ghosting through his stoicism, he stepped down from the altar and slowly advanced towards Kirsty himself.  

 

**“What reason will you give me for your presence this time?”**

 

“I don’t...I don’t understand where I am. I followed the bird…” The creatures laughed. Why was her mind still so foggy?

 

**“Many times you have insisted your ignorance. Your excuses are weakening.”** He stopped mere feet from her.

 

“It’s not an excuse! Please...something is wrong…” She didn’t understand why she couldn’t remember, why her brain felt so thick and hazy. She wish he’d just believe her. She felt the sobs break free from her throat.

 

**“I will no longer indulge this feigned innocence. You cannot outrun a fate of your own choosing.”** The Priest glared down at her like she was a stubborn child.

 

“I didn’t choose anything! I don’t even know how I got here!” Her shrill, cracking voice echoed throughout the chamber.  _ How I got here...got here...got here… _

 

Something in her mind was screaming. The cloying, humid air...the trickling waters...

 

_ “ _ Just tell me how, Kirsty, and all this can be over.” It was a new voice, but an old one. Human. Yes, she remembered it. She turned to look behind her, and instead of the chattering horror, Daniels held her in his unforgiving clutches. He glared determinedly down at her, his fingers digging into her shoulders threateningly. 

 

“Fuck you!” He was much less frightening than the creature, and so she felt emboldened to shove her elbow hard into his soft abdomen. 

 

Daniels released her and staggered in place a little, then bared his shiny white teeth with a irritated glare. “My  _ god  _ you’re a stubborn little bitch.”

 

**“I tire of this game, child.”** The Priest caught her attention once more. 

 

Kirsty had enough. “Fuck you too! Why are you just standing there then? Why not rip me to goddamn pieces right now? Why don’t you just fucking _ get it over with?!”  _ She swiped her left arm across the air in violent exclamation as she raged, fat tears streaming down her face. 

 

**“Indeed. I too have wondered.”** It was the female with the gash in her neck again. She held up a gleaming hooked blade at the ready, and looked to the Priest for command.

 

The Priest however, once more refused to acknowledge her bloodlust. He kept his cold eyes locked on Kirsty, and remained silent, contemplative.

 

“Would’ve if I could’ve, Kirsty.” It was Frank’s voice that pulled her attention this time, standing where Daniels had been. He was cleaning his fingernails with his switchblade. “You just don’t like to play fair for uncle Frank, baby…” He latched a hand onto her left arm and yanked her closer. “But I don’t want to play fuckin’ fair with you either.”

 

She screamed and flailed violently against his eager grip. His hand somehow seared her flesh and mind until bright hot light flashed behind her eyes, and she remembered.

 

A low keening groan left her throat as the images bombarded her. Frank’s return, Julia’s betrayal, her father’s skinned body in the attic. Demons that she herself had summoned. The glow of a monstrous shape suspended in a sky that was not a sky, high above an endless stone labyrinth. Four years of imprisonment. She could see herself wasting away in her locked room. But there was another room, wasn’t there? That’s right…the room in the dark with the operating table...trickling hallucinatory waters, Daniels strapping her weak body down...and a ghost...

 

That was when chains hooked themselves into Frank’s tender flesh, and he screamed and raged as they dragged him away into the dark. Kirsty looked back to the Priest, who seemed more familiar to her than ever.

 

**“Hell is in your mind, child. You cannot escape what lives within you.”**

 

Kirsty had nothing to say to this, and could only try and catch her breath. 

 

He stepped closer until he loomed over her, as overwhelming as the monstrous, hungry obelisk. 

 

**“One can only learn to thrive within its grasp.”**

 

More chains that Kirsty had not noticed before swayed loosely from the black expanse above, both a suggestion and a promise. She began to back away from him, ever so slowly making her way towards the exit and away from the congregation. He watched her move knowingly, but as of yet made no attempt to dissuade her. Rather, he paced with her, a gait both slow and sure.

 

Kirsty tilted her head away and to the side, unsettled and distrustful of his next move. “I don’t think this is thriving.”

 

He laughed at her naivete.  **“You know only of your fear, and the agony in your heart. You have not tasted the true bliss of suffering, brought beyond the threshold of your own mind.”** He was practically circling her now, a dark amusement at the edge of his lips. **“You wallow in mortal concerns, a pathetic supplicant to your own sorrow.”** Kirsty stopped moving. He had insulted her and it smarted, but she felt unsure of herself. She did not know why she wished to listen. **“The pleasures of this realm are the only true escape.”**

 

She grimaced. “I think I’ll get by just fine without them, thanks.”

 

His brow furrowed at her obstinance. **“And what of now? You boast of your resilience while laid out on the table of your captor, imprisoned within in your fragile mind…”** He watched as Kirsty lifted her chin in defiance. **“...And still you so easily return yourself to me once more.”**

 

She grit her teeth. “I couldn’t help it. It was an accident!”

 

He laughed at her again, and the dark sound was echoed by the crowd.  **“Is it not a madness, to repeat one’s mistakes? Or perhaps, the denial of one who wishes to repeat them?”**

 

“This is Daniel’s fault. He fucking put me here! I would never come back here willingly, not even in my own mind!”

 

**“And yet you** **_are_ ** **here. Perhaps it was indeed Daniels who brought you to Hell once more.”** He seemed to smirk at her. **“Perhaps you wished to give him a taste of your wrath, as you did Frank?”**

 

Kirsty heard the Priest’s chains rattle, and she shuddered at the implications. Was she truly so monstrous, somewhere inside? Did she want to torment Daniels for what he had done to her?

 

_ Yes _ , she thought, and blinked the heavy tears away.

 

“You’re not even really here. If this is a dream, then you’re just a figment of my fucked up imagination. How could you even begin to help me if I wanted you to?”

 

**“I am more than that, child. You opened your mind to us long ago, and now it is searching once again for the door.”**

 

_ What? _ What did that mean? “I...I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” She shook her head.

 

**“You will, in time.** **_W_ ** _ a _ **_k_ ** _ e up.” _

 

Kirsty looked at him intently, her brow furrowed. His voice...stuttered. As if someone had cut out the reverb. “...Wake...up?” She echoed the strange words.

 

He frowned intensely, and his black eyes seemed to glaze over and unfocus. His head jerked slightly to the side, as if he was trying to shake himself free of something. 

 

 **“..You** **_m_** _u_ ** _s_** _t wake up._ ” There it was again! Clearly now, she heard the voice of a human man overtake the demonic. The Priest was having none of it, gritting his teeth against the involuntary exclamations.  

 

 **“** ** _Break free.”_** Both voices projected themselves simultaneously into the room, and the sound echoed through the darkness.

 

This strange affliction had possessed even his eyes now, which somehow expressed both rage and a strange solemnity. 

 

And then Kirsty’s whole body was melting through the floor, as if she was made of the viscous blood she had stood in. The liquid abyss swallowed her up, suspending her in total darkness for many minutes; or at least long enough to let her think about the experience. 

 

The emptiness was both overwhelming as it was serene, a surprisingly pleasant contrast to the chaotic and emotionally distressing events moments prior. She wondered what it would be like to exist only like this, untouched by the world’s cruelty. Would she go mad, trapped within her own mind and drowned by darkness? Or perhaps her mind would go dark, too; blissfully so, and she would be made free of everything that plagued her for so long. This thought started to disturb her, so she shied away from it. 

 

Then there was a painful bright light in her eyes. She blinked against it, but a cruel hand held her chin still. It was not the hand of the ghostly soldier, she realized as her eyes adjusted, but Daniels. He was shining a small flashlight into her eyes, careless to how it might effect her.

 

He smacked at her cheek lightly, trying to wake her fully. “That’s enough, Kirsty. Rise and shine.”

 

She coughed away the mucus in her throat. “What...what the hell happened?” She stared at Daniels, who looked sweaty and disheveled, like he’d been working for hours in this humid room. The floodwater that she remembered was gone now. There were papers and tools strewn across the concrete floor below the desk.

 

“Jack shit, that’s what happened!” He violently ran a hand through his roots, which were damp and oily. “Not a god damn thing but you screaming and shouting at people. Fuck!” He viciously swiped a hand across the desk, spilling the remaining contents to the floor.

 

“I...I forgot everything. But then I remembered,” she murmured, still dazed.

 

Daniels scoffed and slumped onto a stool beside her, fidgeting with a pen. “I think some kind of defence mechanism was triggered - you went away somewhere nice for a bit. Then...something else...it wasn’t clear. You were subconsciously rejecting the hypnotic regression. I didn’t account for this. Shit.” He threw the pen somewhere in the corner and she heard it bounce off the wall.

 

She snorted.  _ ‘Somewhere nice’ _ indeed. “I want to go back to my room now.”

 

“No, no you can’t do that. I have to figure out what the fuck went wrong. What did you see? Where were you?” He slammed his hands on either side of the cot beside her head, trapping her. “Please, I need to know.” He was whiny and pathetic, now that his power had slipped.

 

“What the fuck? What are we, old chums? Kiss my ass, Daniels.” Her voice was rasping and quiet. She just wanted to sleep some more in a bed at least slightly more comfortable than this. 

“I’ve had my dose of trauma today and I want to call it a night.” 

 

\---

 

It was not her bed that she was returned to. 

 

Instead, Kirsty found herself dragged back out of the room and down the humid hallways of the Maintenance floor. The orderlies had taken her deep into the unfamiliar corridors, until she no longer knew where she was relative to the elevator. Finally she was promptly stowed away in an empty padded cell, imprisoned indefinitely behind a black iron door. Thankfully they found no need to give her the straight jacket to complete the picture, as she was not currently a threat to herself. She was ‘free’ to move as she pleased within her prison. 

 

And so now she laid there where they dropped her, recuperating from her drugged and stressed state in the relative quiet. There were few inmates down this hallway, and so she was lucky to not have to endure the haunted murmurs or screams of others.

 

Because this level was so uncomfortably humid, Kirsty found that she did not need any threadbare blanket to warm her, nor a pillow to rest her head on. The floor was soft enough, if alarmingly dirty for a sleeping surface. Even so, she still felt the urge to huddle under covers that were not there, if only for the false feeling of protection they might provide.

 

In retrospect, Kirsty felt disturbed and confused about the visions she saw. Was it possible that the soldier was real? Then what of Frank in the cafeteria? Were the Priest and the passageway to Hell merely figments of her imagination, or were they just as potentially real as the soldier?

 

If so, she did not understand how the soldier that sacrificed himself could show himself to her separately, here in the Institute, while the still ‘living’ Priest could be found in that...elsewhere that she had accessed. 

 

Kirsty worried that more was to come, even without the strange drug she was given. It was clear that whatever it was Daniels thought he was doing with this hypnotic regression, something else, something far bigger than he had ever anticipated, was building.

 

Another kind of door had been opened.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This is a re-imagining of the scene in H4 with Pinhead and the Dove, sans the Chatterbeast devouring it. I have my reasons.
> 
> **In an earlier script for H6, Pinhead compares Kirsty to a fruit. This is not that dialogue, but it was inspired by it. The dialogue never made it to the film.
> 
> Philomela is the name of a woman in Greek/Roman myth who was transformed into a nightingale in order to escape her rapist/abuser.


End file.
